Michelle Obama says racist comments hurt the most during her time as First Lady

When you break a glass ceiling – which is exactly what Michelle Obama did – there’s a good chance that you may feel a cut or two. The ones that hurt the deepest depend on the person. For the first black First Lady, it was the comments that were based on racial hatred. Obama made one of her first public appearances since leaving the White House while attending the Women’s Federation of Colorado’s 30th anniversary. The Denver Post reports that the former First Lady took the time to specify how being called an “ape” by politicians in West Virginia and other racial taunts hurt the deepest.

“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” she said to the Pepsi Center crowd of close to 8,500.

“Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color.”
She said she can’t pretend like it doesn’t

While those cuts hurt the most, they were only some of many she endured on her journey to the White House.

“Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut,” she said. “We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up.”

Obama also took time to calm all of our nerves during a time that appears to be a chaotic one for the United States. With the mine-long list of transgressions committed by the Trump administration and its supporters, it’s easy to look at the glass as half-empty sometimes.

“The people in this country are universally good and kind and honest and decent,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of the country you live in. The folks here are
good.”

We miss you, Michelle!

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Keith Reid-Cleveland is a proud product of Chicago’s Southside and the Missouri School of Journalism. The Black Youth Project News Editor has written about politics, race and entertainment for multiple publications, such as Uproxx, The Undefeated, Black Nerd Problems, Comic Book Resources and more.